I just bought a mac mini i7 2012 and pulled the hdd and put in an sdd. I want to use the 1tb hdd as a backup drive and bought a external enclosure.

Before I wipe the drive I'd like to image the OSX that is on it in case I ever want to put it back in the mac mini. The mini did not come with any DVD with an OS so all I have is the HDD.

Any suggestions on what windows 7 tool I can use to make a complete disk image? Would windows 7 backup work? If I were to restore the drive would it boot OSX or are there differences with the partitions/boot loaders etc. I'm not up on my OSX.

I've no idea whats available on Windows these days but I would have done it on the Mini.

I would have left the 1TB in the Mini and then hooked up an external drive and cloned it with one of the following - Carbon Copy Cloner / Superduper or Chronosync. I've used all three before to clone drives but I currently use Chronosync

If you have another external then I'd still do it that way, boot from the SSD and then mount the two external drives. Install one of the above on your main drive and then clone the original 1TB external to the new external._________________Phil

If your Mac problem is a little less common — your hard drive has failed or you’ve installed a hard drive without OS X, for example — Internet Recovery takes over automatically. It downloads and starts OS X Recovery directly from Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection. And your Mac has access to the same OS X Recovery features online. Internet Recovery is built into every new Mac.

Basically what I'm saying is you don't need to clone the original OS becasue you can always download it again onto a fresh drive if needed. The only real downside is the time it takes to download... and if Apple updates the image to something newer than what you want.

As Cypher mentioned you can clone your drive if you wish with the above utilities. I personally use and suggest SuperDuper as the others expire in 30 days.

Your 1TB that was inside the mini is still bootable, therefore you do not have to install if back into the mini. Hold the option key while booting and boot off of it as an external drive.

Then go into disk utility and partition the SSD which is inside your mini and format each partition as GUID Mac OS X Extended Journaled.

Then use SuperDuper to clone the drive you are booting off (which is still your external) onto the small partion on the SSD that you named "OS clean clone" (or whatever you called it).

I'm not sure about SuperDuper, but Carbon Copy Cloner will not only clone your drive, but also it will make a recovery partition on it. I've been using it for years for cloning new drives and backing up old ones. I've never had a problem with it and I highly recommend it._________________Mini 1 (2012): 2.3 ghz Core i7; 10gb RAM, Corsair 240gb SSD, 500gb Seagate XT
Mini 2 (2009): 2.26 ghz Core 2 duo, 8gb RAM, 500gb SSD running Ubuntu
Also a 13" MacBook Air, 21.5" i5 iMac & 11.6" Acer 1810TZ running Ubuntu, openSUSE & Crunchbang